


Nights Like This

by colorofmercury



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-24
Updated: 2011-12-24
Packaged: 2017-10-27 23:58:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 889
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/301508
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/colorofmercury/pseuds/colorofmercury
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Whoops, wrote this on the bus. Inspired by, would you believe it, a wind storm.</p><p>Also hahahaha casually uploads all old fics from LJ at once.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Nights Like This

On windy nights, he can't sleep.    
  
It's not the noise: he's always been able to sleep through noise before, through music and parties and cars and the kitchen being used, pots clanging and oven timers beeping—so the rattling of the windows and howling as air rushes by isn't what keeps him awake.    
  
And it's not fear, either. In the morning, when it's bad enough, some branches will have fallen and the garbage cans will be tipped over, but he doubts something really bad will happen. Even if something does happen, he's more than strong enough to survive it, and even if he doesn't dying in his sleep from a storm is far from heroic.    
  
So while his friends are lying awake struggling to block out the noise or overcome their tired, mindless anxiety, he is going outside on those nights, no more calmed by the storm than any of them.    
  
There is this feeling, this itch, this demand, he has to go, to move, to exist and feel alive out where he can feel the eddies and currents shift between his fingers, where he can make the wind move the way he wants it to but has no control, not really…    
  
On nights like this he has no nope of sleep.    
  
He has tried, before: he's tried just staying in bed even when everything in him is screaming to feel the whole world move with invisible force, tried convincing himself he's tried and warm and can't be bothered to get up but it's a struggle just to lie still.    
  
Tonight he is going outside again, not even trying to ignore the need, and not bothering closing the doors quietly. He knows the storm is keeping everyone else awake, he knows they won't worry where he's gone.    
  
His feet are bare but he hardly notices as he walks out to the most open space he can find nearby, just closing his eyes and standing, just letting the storm whip around him.    
  
It's not enough.    
  
It never is.    
  
On nights like this he just wants to let the wind carry him, let it decide on a whim where he needs to go, because he knows it will take him where he needs to be. Wherever that is.    
  
But he can't. He'll be seen, it will be dangerous, it's dark and he might hit something—these are the reasons that have been drilled into him, and he knows that he simply can't, even though he needs to.    
  
On nights like this he doesn't quietly lament this so much as feel broken inside for the loss.    
  
He needs to feel the wind around him—all around him, on his sides and above him and below him, without the ground or buildings or trees blocking its path to him. He needs to see the world, his world, from above. He needs to feel everything as he sees it, let wind flow from his fingers and through leaves, through grass, through crowds of people, through everything…    
  
He needs to fly.    
  
He needs to be the god he's been conditioned to be.    
  
But he can't.    
  
He never can.    
  
For a long while, he stands outside, struggling with this.    
  
He turns, walks back inside, where maybe the urge won't be so strong, and finds his friends waiting for him, awake.    
  
They don't have the same energy flowing through them, not this moment, but they all know how it feels—they all have nights like this—so they smile tiredly and welcome him to sit beside them.    
  
The hours tick by as the storm blows on, the planet spinning slowly in space and the light gradually growing brighter.    
  
The need passes, for him, as the wind starts to die down. He doesn't try to get to sleep again, even though he knows that in a few days he will be in the position of his friends, staying up throughout the night for one of them just to be there, just to sympathize.    
  
It's hard. It's a struggle for all of them. That desperate need to fly, to see, to fight, to change something. It's not exactly the same for any of them, but it's the same struggle regardless, and it makes them all hurt somehow when they can't be what they're meant to be.    
  
Nights like this are the hardest. The next morning they always have to get back to their lives, try to remember how to be normal again, try to find excuses for their exhaustion.    
  
But it would be harder, he knows: it would be so much harder if they weren't in this together. Because on nights when one of them can't sleep, fighting against that need to be who they really are, the other three will wake. Like clockwork, like the turn of the earth, like the rise of the sun, like the very air they breathe; dependable, regular, trusted, expected, appreciated, the others will be there. Through all the pain and hollow ache of being incomplete, there's a comforting presence there, a silent, reassuring, "I know."    
  
"I know it hurts."    
  
"I know it's hard."    
  
"I know who you really are."    
  
He sits there, with the three people in the world who truly understand him, and the only three he understands in return, and offers his own unvoiced support.    
  
"I know we'll be okay."


End file.
